As for the book on which he laboured with such marvellous heroism, a word may be said in conclusion. Great in his natural powers and great in the use he made of them, Parkman was no less great in his occasion and in his theme. Of all American historians he is the most deeply and peculiarly American, yet he is at the same time the broadest and most cosmopolitan. The book which depicts at once the social life of the Stone Age, and the victory of the English political ideal over the ideal which France inherited from imperial Rome, is a book for all mankind and for all time. The more adequately men's historic perspective gets adjusted, the greater will it seem. Strong in its individuality, and like to nothing else, it clearly belongs, I think, among the world's few masterpieces of the highest rank, along with the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon.
February, 1897.
IX
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The sudden death of Professor Freeman, last March [1892], was a great calamity to the world of letters. Although his achievements in the field of historical writing had been so varied and voluminous, yet some of his most important themes—some of those which had been slowly ripening and most richly developed in his mind—were still awaiting literary treatment at his hands, and at the time of his death he had just finished the third volume of a colossal work which was still in its earlier stages. His end was premature, and it is with a keen sense of bereavement that we take this occasion to pay a brief word of tribute to so dear and honoured a teacher.
Edward Augustus Freeman, son of John Freeman of Redmore Hall, in Worcestershire, was born at Harborne, Staffordshire, August 2, 1823. His life was always purely that of a scholar and teacher, and a chronicle of its events would consist chiefly of the record of books published and offices held at the University of Oxford. He was graduated at Trinity College in 1845, and remained there as a Fellow until 1847. In 1857, 1863, and 1873 he served as Examiner in Modern History. In 1880 he was chosen honorary Fellow of Trinity, and in 1884 Fellow of Oriel. In the latter year he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History, succeeding Bishop Stubbs in that position. It is not necessary to enumerate the honorary degrees which he received from Oxford and Cambridge, and from universities in various European countries. At the time of his death he was a member of learned societies in nearly all parts of the world. For many years he had been a Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Saviour. He had also received honours of knighthood from Servia and Montenegro. In 1868 he was a candidate for Parliament, but failed of election; and that seems to have been his sole venture in the world of politics. His travels upon the continent of Europe were many and extensive. When at home he lived in rural seclusion,—"far from the madding crowd,"—upon his estate at Somerleaze, near Wells and its noble cathedral; only in these latter years he made a home for himself, during the Oxford terms, at St. Giles in that city.
From the very beginning Freeman's historical studies were characterized on the one hand by philosophical breadth of view, and on the other hand by extreme accuracy of statement, and such loving minuteness of detail as is apt to mark the local antiquary whose life has been spent in studying only one thing. It was to the combination of these two characteristics that the preëminent greatness of his historical work was due. We see the combination already prefigured, and to some extent realized, in his first book, "A History of Architecture," published in 1849, although this can hardly be called such a work of original research as the books of his maturer years. Two years afterward appeared the learned "Essay on the Origin and Development of Window Tracery in England," a work which I do not feel able to criticise, but which I am sure is very charming to read. I believe that this book was followed by at least three others in the same department, "Architectural Antiquities of Gower," "The Antiquities of St. David's," and "The Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral," but I have never seen them. In the preface to the essay on window tracery Mr. Freeman alludes to Rev. G. W. Cox as his "friend and coadjutor in many undertakings," and I have heard of a volume of poems "by G. W. C. and E. A. F." published in those days, but I know no more about it. It is to be hoped that these early works, which have become very scarce, will before long be collected and reprinted.
When, after these publications on architecture, Freeman began publishing books and articles on ancient Greece and on the Saracens, I presume there were many of his readers who thoughtlessly assumed that he had changed his vocation; he must more than once have had to answer the stupid question why he had gone over from architecture to history. But in his mind the evolution of architecture was never separated from the course of political history; and the effect of these early studies in architecture, which were indeed never abandoned, but kept up with enthusiasm in later years, was to give increased definiteness and concreteness to his presentation of historical events. When I use such a word as "evolution" in this connection, I do not mean that Mr. Freeman was in any sense a "disciple" of the modern evolution philosophy. There is nothing to show that he ever gave any time or attention to the study of that subject, or that he had any technical knowledge even of its terminology. Whether consciously or unconsciously, however, he was an evolutionist in spirit. From the outset he was deeply impressed with the solidarity of human history, and no student of political development in our time has made more effective use of the comparative method.